The System is always wrong. It is wrong simply because it is a system, an organization. When anything involving people gets organized, it must of necessity walk on someone. I reject categorically the notion that is necessary. It is simply evil.
So Staughton Lynd opposed the system, but made the awful mistake of promoting another system. He sincerely believed it was possible to change evil by political means; he didn’t understand politics is evil personified.
But you have to give him one thing: He knows what commitment means. He walked his talk, which makes him ten times the man almost everyone in US government today. He was willing to live among the people he claimed to help and defend. This is consistent at least to the form of Christian Mysticism in that he clings radically to the truth he knows. It is a natural extension of the Quaker religion he claimed.
He also understood the necessity of compassion, but only partially understood the necessity of not being wound up in the results. He was willing to take on cases in court which he expected to lose, but it was only a tactic.
For me, it is the whole thing.
We are seeing a great many expressions by increasingly mainstream writers who point out the all too obvious failure of American government:
This is where lawlessness leads us – to more lawlessness. Once you commit a lawless act against someone and are not punished for it you have invited them to retaliate with complete disregard for the law in their response. You are only required to deal ethically and morally with an ethical and moral entity across the table – one who ignores the law loses their right to demand that respect in return.
Many in the fringe associations have been agitating for this since before I was born, claiming the rule of law was dead long ago. So it was, but you and I know the sheeple aren’t going to wake up to this soon enough. Indeed, that moment has been long past, too. Still, a high probability of revolt still lies ahead of us. To some degree it has already begun, but whether it will flower into mass bloodshed soon is known only to God. That it eventually will later seems obvious.
I want no part of it. It signifies simply trading one system for another, one set of victims becoming the oppressors of other new victims. Nobody wants to talk about resolving this finally by building something according to our human natures. No, this idiocy runs in cycles until God gets tired of it, getting steadily worse.
What will those true radicals like me do? The same thing we always did. We will continue living in sanity in the mad world, sometimes briefly their pet, most of the time beneath their notice, and occasionally their enemy. The world system will never, ever accept what we are committed to, only bits and pieces of what we might say or do.
I’ll be glad when my time is up and I can go Home.
